Part 1: Long Nguyen - a testing target of B52 Part 2: To the tiger lair Part 3: Evil intention: Bringing the North back to the stone age Part 4: Bach Mai Hospital and 4 times hit by bombs Part 5: The spirit of Kham Thien Part 6: Pains become power Part 7: Anticraft fire lines Lieutenant General Pham Tuan saved little time for a talk with us retelling the story how he shot down a B52 stratofortress from his MiG21. We were impressed by his body build which was comparable to any US Army pilot then. Pham Tuan hero (far left) is in talk with generals of Vietnamese People’s Armed Force He is now in his 65 and still happy. We treasured the time he gave us. Ever since 1967, Regiment 921 had established night flight team to train up ways to shoot down B52 at night. In 1970, Pham Tuan was transferred from MiG-17 to MiG-21 pilot and offered with such training. “We, the night pilots, failed to shoot down any aircraft which was so disappointing. Many peers in day shift became heroes like Mr. Soat, Mr. Lam, and Mr. Lanh but we failed. Knowing this, the commanding center assured us with missions guarding ground marching of our forces,” said Pham Tuan. “I made flights to Quang Binh and Quang Tri battle fields but did not face B52 but F4. I was ordered to protect the ground targets only,” he added. By December 27th 1972, Pham Tuan made his own history by turning down one B52 stratofortress at his 25. “It was 17:00 and I was ordered to fly to Yen Bai before being assigned on the 21:00 sky strike from Yen Bai port. When I was on the sky, plenty of US F4 were there. They just kept chasing me. I was ordered to beat about the bush by evading them. Speed and altitude were the key. It was tense because I were not allowed to lose sight of B52. Thus, I kept swinging around before reaching to the range of about 4 km away from one B52,” he kept on. The MiG-21 piloted by Pham Tuan Hero was approved as a national relic “The ground commander said: “361 fire!” but I refused the first order due to vague of range. By the third order, I was higher than the target which was in my clear sight of firing. The first missile was fired and tailed by the second one in a bright ray of fires. I flipped up and watched my target burst into pieces,” he recalled. “I was back safely at Yen Bai port after a successful mission against enemies hundred times stronger than us. By that time, we had only 10 pilots in our team in night flights and 3 to 4 airports while they had nearly 200 aircrafts,” he asserted. Reported by T. Dong – H. Van – Translated by Vi Bao